BlueJacket Town has a ring to it.
Bunghole of America has a certain … air … to it. 
It might, and it might not. Good news is, in the future you’ll be dead.
I’m going to say the answer is 100% YES.
Go ahead, prove me wrong.
BJ Town for short.
Fantastic for tourism!
At the very least it would be Indigenia. But seeing as the city itself doesn’t really honor Columbus, and most people don’t even make the connection, I doubt it will change. This is different from Columbus Day, which is specifically honoring him.
Still, I think an Indigenous People’s Day or whatever doesn’t really fit the good reason for the holiday. It’s celebrating the discovery of the “New World.” So something like “America Day” or something would be cool. And, as a bonus, we’d be using “America” to mean North and South America.
(Alternatives include “Western World Day” or “Discovery Day.”)
While we’re just asking, I’m just asking. If you looked at your plane ticket and it said:
**“Indiginous People’s City”
would that make your teeth clench up and your head start vibrating? With your eyes angrily squinting? If so, I say we rename it just for you.
**
Maybe we shouldn’t name it “Westworld Day.” Folks might get the wrong idea about how to celebrate.
If removing all names and monuments commemorating the Confederacy is the right thing to do, then I can’t think of any reason not to do the same with Columbus and his ilk that isn’t hypocritical post hoc special pleading.
This is a ridiculous pile of crap.
Nobody is doing anything to history by renaming things. If the past is another country, then we have a right in this country (the present) to decide what we want things named after.
Changing the name of the City of Columbus, Ohio, does nothing to the history or biography of Christopher Columbus.
It doesn’t even do anything to the history of the City of Columbus, Ohio. It just becomes part of the history of the city. It used to be named “Columbus” and now it’s named something else. That also goes into the history books.
Why should they matter? What should they matter for? Each day I wake up in Columbus, Ohio, is a new day when I get to decide whether I want to honor Christopher Columbus in the name of the city. It’s not something he, or his history, or his memory, has a right to.
It is right now. It might not be tomorrow. Whether or not things currently named for Henry Hudson remain named for Henry Hudson in the future really has nothing to do with Henry Hudson’s biography or the history of the world.
This isn’t even an argument. It’s a series of meaningless questions. If the People of X decide they want to rename X, that means nothing regarding whether or not the People of Y must rename Y. Maybe neither will want to rename. Maybe one but not the other will want to rename. Maybe all of them will be renamed. There’s nothing wrong in principle with any of those things happening.
Perhaps a smarter idea is to stop naming shit after prominent people. Prominent people are by and large jerks by the lights of their own time. And are criminals by the lights of later, more enlightened times. It’s decades past time we stop commemorating jerks.
Many sensible organizations have rules against naming stuff for living people. If only to reduce the need to retract those names after the person does something stupid. At least when somebody is dead his/her resume is fixed. What we think of that resume changes over time.
I like this answer a lot.
(I was born in DC. A lot of folks don’t realize it’s full of regular people.)
Generally, towns or regions get renamed when the people actually living in them want to rename them. We say Istambul(-not-Constantinople, or for that matter Byzantium) because that’s the way actual Turkish people like to refer to the city. IOW exactly the same reason we say Mumbai, Beijing or Zimbabwe.
If someday the residents of Columbus decide they want to call it Ohio City, Sittingbull or Ohiohihoitsofftoworkwego, I’m sure we’ll all get used to it in no time
Aha! I see you’re acquainted with East St. Louis!
According to Wikipedia, that area was inhabited by a group of people known as the Mosopelea who called the area Masopeleakicipi. That’s a mouthful, but the Ohio river was called the Oligin. I’d vote for either one of those.
I mean, FFS, Columbus Day is a fake holiday that was originally invented as the Italian version of St. Patrick’s day. He was an Italian hired by Spaniards who landed in the Caribbean thinking he was in India. He had nothing to do with Ohio or Washington D. C or the English colonies or the US government. He’s literally nothing to us. Why do we keep flogging this horse?
Because it’s easier to keep doing what we’ve been doing than to change. Nothing more to it than that.
As Socrates said, “The unexamined life is a lot of fun to live.”
Or something that. I’m not too sure. I don’t know of any statues of Socrates in my area, so my grasp of Greek history is very tenuous.
By the way, when are we changing the name of the Grand Tetons? As a woman, I object to the harassment of having a mountain range named Big Tits.
By the way, when are we changing the name of the Grand Tetons? As a woman, I object to the harassment of having a mountain range named Big Tits.
Let’s change it to Bigus Dickus.
Whoa, talk about double D’s.